Hans Christian Andersen wrote many famous fairy tales such as "The Ugly Duckling," "The Little Mermaid," and "The Emperor's New Clothes." A lot of them are arguably as famous as (or more famous than) some of the Grimms' fairy tales or Aesop's fables.

Although Grimms' tales could be pretty serious (and occasionally gruesome), many of Andersen's fairy tales were very sad and tragic -- take a look, for example, at "The Red Shoes," "The Little Match Girl," or even the aforementioned "Little Mermaid" -- the original ending was hardly Disney material!

Andersen's Fairy Tales as available in the ArcaMax Book Club isn't a complete collection. Andersen wrote so much throughout his lifetime that it would be difficult to collect everything in one edition. These are the best, though: the familiar ones, as well as some lesser-known ones.




I grew up with a video of the movie Hans Christian Andersen with Danny Kaye in the starring role. At first, I didn't think anyone else in the world had seen this -- but a lot of my friends have fond memories of it, too! Has anyone else seen this movie? If not, it's wonderful. It's really more of a fairy tale in and of itself, but the songs are great and the romantic subplot is really sweet (albeit really sad).